A History of Nosebleeds
by HotPinkCoffee
Summary: A character study on Orc, Howard, and violence begetting violence. Rated T for child abuse and bullying. Spoilers up through Plague.


**A History of Nosebleeds**

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"I'd swing that blade right through my life. Careful, you could hurt someone. I wish I was a sharp knife to cut a shiv." – Third Eye Blind, _Sharp Knife_

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"Come on, Charlie, eat your dinner. See, vroom, it's a little airplane delivering all that tasty food to your mouth. Vroom, vroom. There goes the little airplane, into your mouth, vroom. Okay, Charlie, here's another bite. Ooh, it's a helicopter now, chock chock chock. You have to grow up big and strong so you can take care of mommy."

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The first time Charles punched someone hard enough to make them bleed, he was six. It shocked him to find out that he could cause a red splatter down another kid's shirt with just a motion. It shocked him more when the teacher and the teacher's aide pulled the kids apart and scolded him.

"Your mom doesn't have time for dis'plinary meetings with your teacher," his dad said later, giving him a smack upside the head. When Charles tried to scold him, his dad got out the belt.

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Howard got his first broken nose at eight years old. Just what a snitch deserved.

"Stop crying, tattletale, or I'll hit you harder."

"Don't you even think of telling again. You tell your mommy you fell off the monkeybars or you're dead meat, midget."

"Shut up. He didn't even hit you that hard."

Howard learned at a young age that his peers were the enemy.

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Elsa ran the towel under warm water and wiped blood from her son's upper lip and cheek. He sat at the edge of the tub and stared at the tile floor, avoiding her eyes.

"Charlie, you can't tell no one about this, okay? We can't have the police showing up over a little nothing like this. Just pretend you understand next time and don't ask no questions."

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Howard sat in the backseat of his mother's car, breathing through his mouth because he had hunks of blood-soaked kleenex stuffed up his nostrils.

At a stoplight, Lilah leaned back and looked over at her brooding son. "When we get home, I'll turn some movies on and you can lie down for a bit. I'll take care of the cat's litterbox today."

"Yeah, guess I gotta be well-rested for getting my butt kicked again tomorrow," he said in a voice distorted by his blocked nose.

"You know, it's that kind of sarcasm that gets you whupped by those kids in the first place."

"'Cuz killing them with kindness totally sounds like a solid plan," he said, staring out the window.

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"Don't call me stupid!" Charles upturned the chair next to him to emphasize his point. The kid who'd made the remark backed up so fast he nearly tripped over his own seat. All it had taken was the detention supervisor taking five minutes off and a few harsh words, and suddenly violence was the foremost fear in everyone's mind.

"Yeah, seriously. Don't call him that, moron."

"Yeah." Charles looked over in surprise at the smaller black kid who'd placed himself by his side. The kid looked up at him with an innocuous smile, and in that moment Charles mistook opportunism for kindness.

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"You're like…you know that movie we watched, that Lord of the Rings movie? You're like one of those guys, those Uruk-Hai guys."

"Those the big guys with the handprints?"

"Yeah. You know, the really big guy who took out Boromir. With the really sick battle with Aragorn, right?"

"I don't know how you remember all these names, Howard."

"Anyway, I just mean - you need help carrying that? Nah, of course you don't - I just mean, you're beastly and mad strong. Like one of those Uruk-Hai."

"Urk-eye?"

"Like an orc, dude."

"That's easier to say."

"Can I call you that?"

"Okay."

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"You need to stay home more, Charlie," Elsa said, folding the laundry. She complained that the bright fluorescent lights in the washroom made her need those dark glasses, but Orc wasn't that stupid. While he was out with Howard, his mom was taking his beatings. He didn't care.

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Lilah was nearly out the door by the time her husband came home. She clenched her car keys so hard in her hand they left red imprints along the insides of her fingers.

"I've got to go pick up Howard. He's in the principal's office again."

It's a phrase Richard Bassem hasn't heard in a few years. "Is he hurt?"

"No. He and the Merriman boy hurt someone else."

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"Your dad seriously called me that?" Howard swung his legs off the corner of the slide, lounging in a way that misrepresented his thirteen years. Next to Orc especially, he seemed almost childlike.

Orc glowered at smaller kids, who skirted tentatively out of reach, wondering if they'd get a chance to play on the slide or if it had been declared permanent territory of the scariest students in the middle school. "Yeah. He said not to bring you 'round no more or you'd steal something."

"He know you steal money out of his wallet?"

"Nope."

Howard laughed his mean little laugh. "Oh well. Yet another reason to hang out at my place instead of yours."

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Howard never had any delusions of basketball stardom, but there was a basketball hoop in his driveway, and occasionally he could be found making shots in the afternoon. Never when he expected anyone, because effort at anything he wasn't good at was just giving ammunition for people to use against him.

He started when Orc called his name. "Hey, Orc, what's - oh man, what happened to your face?"

Orc shrugged, squinting through a blackened eye and speaking around a chipped tooth. "Tripped over a toolbox in the garage. Can I stay for dinner?" He ran his tongue over the sharpened edge of his broken tooth, clearly still unaccustomed to its new shape.

Howard glanced between the Orc and the door to his house, a question pinned between his lip and his teeth. "Let me ask my mom."

His mother complained that she'd already made only three servings of chicken and couldn't whip up more on short notice, but upon peeking out the window and seeing Orc gingerly touching the swelling around his eye, acquiesced to her son's request.

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"Oh man, fatality. Nice button-mashing there, dude."

Orc gave Howard a skeptical look. "Did you let me win?"

"What? No. You think I like losing?"

Orc thought about that, squinting with puzzlement as he tried to deduce Howard's motivations. "No."

"So why would I let you win?"

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"You want to stop him from seeing his best friend?" Richard took a slow breath and exhaled it over his coffee, sending asymmetrical patterns of steam wafting over the placemat. "How's that supposed to help?"

"They were caught shoplifting, Rick. What am I supposed to do, give him a pat on the back?"

"No, I mean. You know how long it took him to make friends. You think isolating him is going to make his behavior improve?"

"I think that Merriman kid's a bad influence. That's what I think."

Richard sighed and cleared his throat. "Honestly, his parents are probably saying the same about Howard."

Lilah crossed her arms over her chest like a coat of armor.

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"Do you only hang around 'cuz I keep you safe from other kids?"

Howard looked up from where he was doing Orc's book report. "Don't be stupid."

"Don't call me stupid."

"Okay."

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"Is that a beer?"

"It's a soda," Howard told his mother.

"Let me see it."

Howard tilted his head at her, then handed it to Orc, sitting on the couch next to him. He turned back to his mother, as if daring her to try and take it from the massive kid next to him. For his part, Orc continued to watch the action movie they'd been viewing before the interruption, but not before slightly crinkling the half-full can in his fist.

Lilah tapped her foot and glared at her son, then walked away.

"Geez, Mom," Howard said, taking the can back and swigging. "It's just a soda."

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Aluminum bat at hand, Howard closed the door to his house. "They're not home."

"No one next door, either."

"You want to check and see if your parents disappeared too?"

Orc didn't say anything, and Howard took it as a 'no'.

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Howard stood up too fast, and all the starvation and dehydration of the last few weeks rushed straight to his brain. He fell to the floor with a heavy thump and a groan.

Orc stood over him for a few minutes, unsure what to do. He didn't know how to check for a pulse or whether to splash some liquid on Howard's face. He stared, baffled, trying to remember what the telltale signs of life were.

There. The slow, deep breaths that raised and lowered Howard's prominent ribcage.

Orc scooped Howard up as gently as his incredible strength was capable of and carried him to the bed.

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"Hey, gimme a hand here." Orc's voice echoed down the hallway, over the sound of Drake and Brittney in the basement.

"What's up?" By now Howard knew well enough that Orc would never need an actual physical hand, and even then, certainly not Howard's meager capabilities.

Orc motioned over to a comic book on his lap. "It's too complicated. I want you to help."

"Okay." Howard climbed up onto the back of the couch and read the harder words out loud over Orc's shoulder, leaning slightly against Orc's back to see the panels in the bottom corners. Orc didn't say anything in thanks, but the slow turns of the page told Howard he was listening.

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Howard's muscles and bones were tired from a day spent wandering the streets, calling for Orc, hauling an eight year-old's body into a shallow grave. His water-logged shoes were heavy and made sloshing noises as he ran. A few hundred yards from where Coates was hidden behind trees, he doubled over and panted, pulling dry air into his quaking lungs.

He stood up straight as a firepole when he heard Orc's cries of pain and Astrid's screaming. His first impulse was to run towards the sounds and help his only friend. His second impulse, probably the more rational one, was to walk away from whatever force could make Orc scream.

He lifted a hand to his nose, feeling the dried blood crusted there.

He walked away, sick on the inside and tired out.

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Orc and Howard sat next to each other in the back of the pickup on the way to Lake Tramonto. No one spoke to them and they hardly spoke to each other. Howard kept avoiding Orc's eyes, absorbed instead in the scenery and the other kids ignoring them.

"Sorry I hit you," Orc finally said.

Howard picked at the threads of his jeans, eyes scrunched up and focused on a space of air in front of his nose, lost in thought somewhere else.

"Okay," he said.

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Fin


End file.
